Page 65 - Studio International - December1996

Angeles and Hollywood. His French delicatessen objects
are the smallest he has made, like dry, sober, rather
finicky Parisian gourmets. The recent medium-sized
objects from New York have, with the artist, emerged
from the slums; like the new middling jet-set bourgeoisie
of parties and private views they are spinelessly blasé or
plump and positive.
He can be seen as BIG, SOFT, STRONG. The most striking
thing about his objects is that they are SOFT. In earlier
years, the content of his objects dealt entirely with soft-
ness: clothes, meat, cakes. Since then, most of the objects
made by Oldenburg have been soft (with the principal
exception of the French objects) while the subjects have
been hard. Why is all art hard ? Hard and taut like a
canvas, hard and brittle like a sculpture. Is this a tendency
towards sublimation and the rigours of the superego?
Does this perhaps give the impression of changelessness,
perfection or eternal life ?
But the object which yields is stronger. It is the same
with Oldenburg himself; when he directs his perfor-
mances, it seems as though he is always yielding to
circumstances, materials, people. This allows people,
material or space to be themselves, but in the end what
Soft typewriter 1963 are fetiches which make them (better) Americans, results is always a characteristically Oldenburg work.
Kapok, cloth, plexiglas mothers, millionaires, filmstars, fighters, mistresses and But to yield to people does not mean for Oldenburg
27 1/2 x 26 x 9 in.
Collection: Alan Power, cowboys. that he does this out of kindness or with the intention of
Richmond The tiresome thing about African fetiches is that they can improving them, as in psychological drama. They are
only be (for us) beautiful shapes and a form of exoticism. entirely subordinated to Oldenburg's vision, but within
The engaging thing about Claes Oldenburg's objects is it they have life. In the same way, I imagine that nowa-
that besides bringing out basic shapes and sign charac- days he manages to direct his army of assistants who sew
teristics inherent in universal, everyday objects, he deals for him : impoverished women artists and dancers, rich
with fetich qualities with the glamour which ecstatic ob- housewives, professional seamstresses and, first and fore-
jects radiate. (Oldenburg has never made objects which most, his wife Pat. Without her stitching and her contri-
are unpainted, 'pure' sculpture.) Furthermore, his objects bution to his performances, Oldenburg, as we know him,
do not allude to everyday objects and are generally larger would not exist.
than life : they are not intended to be used, only to radiate. Oldenburg's quality of involved detachment means that
Every hamburger or typewriter by Oldenburg becomes he can plunge into and grope about in a sea of people just
a monument to the ecstatic object. Recently, Oldenburg as easily as he can root around in the Salvation Army's
has also begun to make projects for monuments in New boxes of tattered and faded old clothes on Second Avenue.
York consisting of colossal objects. (If this is really neces- (Pat's and his way of looking through their address book
sary. In Europe, monuments are erected to Garibaldi or and ringing up candidates for their Happenings was like a
the Unknown Soldier. In the U.S., for example, the virtuoso pianist looking over his music.) It must have
puffing 'Camel' cigarette in Times Square has become a been the same when he plunged into the slums of Chicago
national triumphal arch erected to the Unknown Con- during his prehistoric years as a crime reporter.
sumer- otherwise it would surely have been pulled down, In the same way, he was busy browsing his way through
as 'Camel' is almost extinct.) Lower East Side when my wife Barbo and I first met him
Because Claes Oldenburg conducts experiments into in the autumn of '61. For the most part, Puerto-Ricans
pleasure magic it does not follow that he translates the lived in this area, and every now and then, neighbours
bourgeois clichés of Madison Avenue. Even though the threw bricks through the windows in the yard so that
external quality of his objects differs from that of everyday Claes had to put up bars.
objects, this does not imply anything expressionistic For us artists Lower East Side at the time represented a
which introduces an orientation towards the ego. The rugged idyll, an inspiring small town. When we had
marked character or personality which his objects parties we invented new dances, spoke with tongues, cast
possess is rather the result of a perspicacious, friendly and off our clothes and pelted each other with pats of butter.
lyrical (crazy) recording of the milieu in which the artist The owner came and blew us up. In the afternoon, Claes
lives at the moment he is making them. worked setting up books at the Cooper Union. In the
In form, material and dimension, or 'style', his earlier, evenings sometimes Dick Bellamy (who with the Green
papier mâché — like objects and his reliefs tell some- Gallery launched pop art) looked in and borrowed
thing about New York's shabby, seething and hectic Oldenburg's rickety bathtub and lay in it reading Vogue.
Slavonic-Puerto-Rican East Side. The big pieces of furni- Öyvind Fahlström
ture are concerned with the (white) West Coast Ameri- r
cans, the frank and naïve, grown-up mentality of Los